Wednesday, June 21, 2017

stamp people

It has been two years since I first encountered Jacki Long's "stamp people." I was utterly charmed from the very start, and I couldn't wait to imitate her style. But the idea must have needed time to ferment deep inside of me, because I couldn't seem to act on my intentions.

Two weeks ago, I was dusting off a stack of stamp albums that remained from a long forgotten childhood passion. This led to the merciless culling of a box full of cooking magazines I'd meant, but failed, to throw into the recycling bin.

Suddenly, the time was ripe, and stamp people collages began popping out of me at the pace of one a day. It has been LOADS of fun.

The postage stamps themselves are rather boring as stamps go, but the men depicted on them rightly earned their places there, and their stories and characters are fascinating. So here I present to you my first crop of stamp people collages. From the top: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, John Muir, Albert Einstein, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

A Beginner's Guide to Etegami

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.